The BNP: still racist

I've spent most of the week immersed in mind-numbing legal arguments and detailed chronologies, all of which are being picked apart at great expense in public to figure out whether the Labour government broke the law by going to war in Iraq.

There is almost unanimity in the legal community on this point – it is perhaps testimony to the tenacity of Goldsmith that he can hold his head up during six hours of evidence and insist that all lawyers – except the ones he instructed to present his case – are wrong.

So it's almost refreshing to turn my attention to a group of politicians who are so clearly and audaciously intent on breaking the law that there is little room for ambiguity or complex argument.

It's the BNP of course – those reliable law-breakers, almost reassuringly consistent in their racism. You know where you stand with this party. So much so that even a concerted effort to persuade a court that they are trying to comply with the law is almost laughable in its failure.

Today the party were back in Central London county court, presenting a new draft constitution and seeking an adjournment so that they could ask members to vote on it.

This new constitution was written in response to the threat of legal action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which claimed that the party's "all white" membership criteria amounted to direct discrimination.

The BNP got their adjournment, but there appears to be little point in the exercise. They have now managed to produce a document which is just about the most straightforward example of indirect discrimination imaginable.

"We are implacably opposed to the promotion by any means of any form of integration or assimilation of any indigenous people," the new statements of principles say, "including the Indigenous British, which is likely to deprive such people of their integrity as a distinct people or the distinctiveness of their cultural values or of their ethnic or national identities or characteristics."

Behind this gobbledygook is a fairly clear statement that non-white people are still unwelcome in the BNP, perhaps not a surprise to anyone apart from the BNP who apparently thought these changes would be lawful. The arguments against that, the judge said today, were "powerful".

These are expensive mistakes for the BNP. Today they were ordered to pay the Commission's costs – around £12,500, and with a general election looming, it's not a good time to be shedding money on imbecilic legal screw-ups.

Apparently they had consulted lawyers – perhaps further evidence of this week's prevailing theme that legal advice is not always to be relied on. And for all those minorities who were waiting with baited breath for the constitution to be changed so that they could join, membership remains frozen. What a shame.